Unquiet Ghosts Read online

  So each evening, to ease her fear, I left a lamp lit on the landing.

  Amy would see its golden light beyond her door whenever she awoke. And then she would fall back to sleep.

  * * *

  With children in my life, my existence felt complete.

  These were days I wanted to inhale like fragrant air, each memory precious. And so I kept a diary. I hoped one day to be a writer, and I read somewhere that keeping a journal was important for an author, like a singer practicing scales. So I wrote about every tiny or meaningful experience I shared with our children, until another wicked tempest raged into my life and claimed my family from me, and they disappeared. From that day on, I never thought I would write another word.

  Yet these images in the silver frame—my deepest wounds—are also my salvation. For when I feel the cool smoothness of the glass that covers their beaming faces and glide my fingertips over their outlines, it reminds me of the radiant spirits that once illuminated my world.

  The lips I can no longer kiss, voices I can no longer hear, faces I can no longer touch.

  And they remind me of the cruelest lessons life has taught me.

  * * *

  Write this down if you want, and never let anyone tell you otherwise: Love has a price.

  There never can be—never will be and never has been—a single love that comes without agony. When loved ones die or leave us of their own choosing—when we stay but love no longer or when we shatter a human heart by our treachery or by our leaving—we pay the cost sooner or later.

  As every sin has its own avenging angel, every giving and letting go has its day of reckoning.

  Another thing I’ve learned: Sometimes those we worship harbor unimaginable secrets.

  All families have secrets. Some are innocent. Some seep like poison through the veins of successive generations. Dark secrets that can maim and destroy as cruelly as any weapon. For just as the sweetest sounds can induce the greatest sorrows, so, too, can the purest love contain the seeds of the most malignant hurts.

  Like the Celtic legend of the bird that sings just once in its life but more sweetly than any other creature on this earth. From the moment it can fly, it searches for a rosebush, and when it finds one, it impales its breast on the sharpest barb. In its dying agony, it sings a supreme hymn, a song so exquisite that every living thing in its orbit stops to listen and marvel at the beauty.

  And so do we, each of us in our own way, seek out our own thorns to impale our hearts on. Not for the pained joy of some glorious hymn but because we cannot help ourselves. It’s as if our fortunes are written in our stars.

  And so they are.

  Have you ever stopped and realized that if you had not met a certain person, your whole life would be different? For this, too, I’ve learned, that whatever love we encounter in our lives isn’t just a chance meeting in a chaotic world.

  It’s a fate.

  A thread in the tapestry of our existence that is more mysterious than any of us can understand, one that echoes across the ages. To rephrase another writer’s words, you will find in each of us all the sums we have not counted. For every moment in our lives is a window on all time, as if the kiss that began four thousand years ago in Crete ended yesterday in Texas.

  I believe that.

  And that each heart and mind seeking and finding another is never the consequence of some accidental journey but a destiny, waiting to teach us a life lesson or ambush us with some terrible truth that the universe insists we must learn.

  I know that because I have learned from my own bitter truths.

  And my first lesson began on the morning I got married, when my mother arrived drunk at Cedar Springs Church with a loaded gun in her purse and murder in her heart.

  2

  * * *

  Thunder Mountain, Smoky Mountains, East Tennessee

  If there was a hell on earth, then this swampy forest came close.

  Brewster Tanner felt an icy shiver snake down his spine. Tanner hated wooded swamps.

  Tanner was fifty pounds overweight, with a noble profile that would not have looked out of place on an ancient Roman coin. If he was a singer, he would have been Barry White. People said he sounded like him, too, when Tanner used to do karaoke. A bass voice, deep as a dungeon, the kind that resonated with certain women.

  Except he didn’t look anything like Barry White. Tanner was a light-skinned African-American, soft-featured, handsome-pretty. Folks often said he reminded them of that old-time actor Sidney Poitier but just, well, a little heavier.

  He stared through the windshield as he drove his white Camry through emerald-green forest, the radio on. It was not Barry singing but Beyoncé blaring about “all the single ladies.” Tanner always got a laugh when he heard that song. Beyoncé in concert, pocketing millions and going home to her husband and kids, leaving all those dumb single hos singing that song, dancing around with their handbags.

  In the sultry heat, tangled green branches overhung stagnant pools of water the color of coffee grounds. A nearby stream had flooded, saturating the ground, covering tree trunks with at least a foot of water. The air was rich with the smells of damp soil and green plants.

  Reporters, cameramen, and TV crews mingled on either side of the track, the crowd three deep. Tanner saw a man running with a camera and a brace contraption on his shoulder, as if he’d just stolen it. Nearby, a pair of TV vans, local affiliates for CNN, ABC, and NBC, swung their satellite dishes to point into the hot noon sun, ready to relay their news stories to headquarters in Atlanta and New York.

  Tanner flicked crumbs from his size-58 chest, the flaky remains of a diabetic-friendly hazelnut cookie he’d eaten on the long stretch of dirt track that twisted through the swamp.

  Bony tendrils of dead creepers were woven through the trees like petrified snakes, some of the branches covered in wispy spider veils that resembled Spanish moss. Tanner took a deep breath, and the brown, musty smell of decaying rain forest flooded his nostrils. He felt another shiver, more violent.

  Swamps gave him the creeps, even one as full of activity as this. They made him think of alligators and snakes, reptiles and spiders. Things that bit you, killed you, or chewed you alive. Did they have gators in East Tennessee? He didn’t think so, even if this particular landscape more resembled his hometown in Louisiana.

  Bears and snakes here for sure. And crazy folks, like the ones he’d passed along the track. Shabby single-wide hillbilly trailer homes or pitiful shacks, their lots adorned with the rusting carcasses of old cars and pontoon boats, flower beds sown around them as if in a graveyard, planted in fond memory of their once-beloved transport. Didn’t these people ever get rid of an old car, other than leave it to rot on their property?

  The Smoky Mountains looked beautiful, draped in a thin veil of morning fog. But this place—this ugly, swampy creek below the side of a mountain—reminded him of something out of that old madcap survival movie Deliverance.

  Along the way, Tanner saw muddy four-wheelers and ancient-­looking rocking chairs on nailed-together DIY porches made of boxwood. A few grubby kids played outside the shacks near wire-run chicken coops and goats. Older faces peered from behind sun-bleached shutters, weathered with missing teeth, their owners with tattoos adorning arms, hands, or necks.

  In one window, a sign said “Banjo Lessons.”

  Who in their right mind would want to come out here for banjo lessons, unless they were drugged or psychotic?

  He eased his Camry past a TV crew. Yellow police tape blocked his path. Tanner flashed his ID at a pair of sheriff’s uniforms, and one of them raised the yellow tape, indicating that he could park fifty yards along the dirt road, near a clearing. He coasted the Camry onto the grassy spot and hit the hand brake.

  As he flicked off Beyoncé and stepped out of the Camry into a solid wave of heat, the sounds of the swamp exploded. An orche
stra of crickets, frogs, and birds, all accompanied by the clatter of a pair of police helicopters up high.

  His bulk had made it a struggle as he climbed out, the car floor and side pockets awash with crushed candy bar and gum wrappers. Sweat beading his brow—it was unseasonably hot for mid-March, not unusual in the South—Tanner stood there, taking the shallow breaths of a mild asthmatic, holding on to the Camry’s door for support.

  Up ahead, he saw something weird. A mangled mess. What it was he couldn’t rightly tell. But it was some kind of structure, beaten to a pulp.

  “What in the heck have we got here?”

  Tanner shut the Camry’s door and strolled forward. He halted after twenty yards. The mess appeared to be the remains of a cabin lot backing onto the forest.

  What he saw shocked him. The cabin had all but disintegrated.

  What remained was the wooden base and a jagged portion of one wall, as if some monster had taken a bite out of it. Bits of debris and siding were spread about the site. The relics of a refrigerator were flung to one side, parts of it crushed and shattered in the trees, with wood siding, part of a window frame, and a chunk of an aircraft wing entangled in the upper branches.

  Farther on, through the forest, he saw the scattered remains of a small aircraft that looked as if it had shattered into a thousand pieces. Little yellow card markers with numbers on them were planted next to debris, and people in white hazard suits were sifting through the wreckage. He spotted a bunch of Park Services guys in uniforms. Tanner had to look twice to be certain; it appeared as if the property on the lot had been smashed into the woods by the force of the crash.

  “Hey, Tanner!”

  A bunch of men carrying clipboards huddled nearby, “NTSB” in gold lettering on the backs of their blue nylon vests—National Transportation Safety Board. Next to them was a muddied green Polaris Ranger buggy.

  A little ruddy-faced man with wiry gray hair and glasses waved to Tanner and broke away from the others. Dale Dexter looked like a garden gnome, his oversized head way too large for his slender body.

  “Hey, big fella. You made it.”

  “Dexter, how are they hanging, baby?” Tanner looked over at the crash site and made a face. “Looks bad. Dead?”

  “At least three. The pilot and a female passenger and some poor unfortunate guy I reckon may have been out front of the cabin when the downed plane hit the porch.”

  “How’s that?”

  “We’re scraping what’s left of him off the Cessna’s nose cowl.”

  Tanner made another face. “Ouch! Not a nice way to go.”

  “A word of warning. Watch out for snakes.”

  “You trying to ruin my day?”

  “Cottonmouths are the most dangerous. You don’t get an antidote in thirty minutes, you’re going home nailed in a box.”

  “You’re a good man, Dexter. Full of useful survival tips. Please tell me you’re going to suck the poison out of my butt if I get bitten.”

  “I don’t think we’re that close, Tanner.”

  “Charming.”

  “Ask your buddy, Agent Breedon, though.”

  “He’s here?”

  “Arrived fifteen minutes ago. Big boy, muscular, chews gum. Doesn’t say much, does he?”

  “Naw, he’s a mute.”

  “What?”

  “Seems that way. Breedon’s a man of few words. Scares the life out of me sometimes. You look over your shoulder, and there he is. Or else he creeps up on you, saying nothing. I try to let him work away on his own and out of my way.”

  Dexter climbed into the buggy. “Get in.”

  “Where we going?” Tanner squeezed his bulk into the passenger seat, and the buggy tilted to one side. The engine growled as Dexter hit the start button, turning the wheels away from the crash site.

  “We’ve opened a second investigation a half mile away, where part of the aircraft landed. That’s where the real action is. That’s where we found something buried deep, right there in the woods.”

  “Don’t tell me, Jimmy Hoffa, right?”

  “Funny. But you ain’t ever seen nothing like this, big fella.”

  3

  * * *

  Knoxville, Tennessee

  Some people remember their dead with mausoleums, stone-carved angels, elaborate tombs, or brass plaques.

  I had no need of such things.

  The gravesite I chose was on a rise, a simple granite stone shaded by a clump of cedar trees. I parked outside the cemetery and walked up the narrow path in the cold sunshine, carrying a bunch of yellow winter roses and tugging up my coat collar against the cold air.

  It was one of those weird schizophrenic weather weeks in Tennessee that could catch you off guard. Twenty-four hours ago, it was in the mid-seventies. Today it was still sunny but a good thirty degrees less, chilly and cold. Some days in February and March it might snow, but within twenty-four hours a heat wave would split the stones. Like I said, weird.

  The local cemetery dated back to 1796, but most of the graves were much more recent. Some of the city’s first settlers were buried here. A few were victims of the early Indian wars, and a few others were well-known dignitaries or from notable families. But the rest, like all of us, were the mediocre dead, as my father liked to say.

  I moved past tombs of worn granite and marble, past the uprooted earth of freshly dug graves and a group of mourners hunched in their own private grief.

  An elderly man was sweeping away some leaves on the path, and he touched his baseball cap. “’Morning, Kath.”

  “Good morning, George.” I didn’t engage the cemetery caretaker in our usual conversation about the weather. I really didn’t feel much like talking today, an anniversary on which I sometimes preferred to be alone.

  On this of all days, I wanted to stand upon the earth that covered my husband, son, and daughter. To touch the stone that bore their names and to remember the sacredness of our lives together. That stone was pretty much all I had to remember the life we had shared and lost, eight years ago.

  I came to the top and the two graves. My mother was the one on the left. The other was for Jack and our children. The bodies of my husband and children had never been found, but we all need to remember our dead with plaques or gravestones, so I chose to place a gravestone here.

  There was a small bench off to the left, but before I sat, I laid the roses on the graves, split them equally, the yellow a flash of vivid color against the black granite slabs. I said the prayers and the words I wanted to say, the same words I always said—that I missed them so much, that I longed to have them back, that their passing had left such a terrible ache, an unending sorrow.

  That nothing could replace them, nothing, not ever. Standing there, under the warm sun, my eyes swept over the smooth, dark granite, and I stared at the simple chiseled words that inscribed my pain:

  Here lies Jack Hayes, beloved husband of Kath.

  And their son, Sean, and daughter, Amy.

  Until we’re together again, you will forever be missed.

  I still missed them. Sometimes I missed them so much I felt physically ill, my grief so huge it was hard for me to breathe. Of course, I had dreams and memories and photographs. But my dreams were sometimes disturbed, and photographs were always so inadequate, never capturing the real truth—the soul behind the image, the beauty behind the smile, the happiness behind the laughter.

  They had never captured the real Jack I had known since we first met at Fort Campbell Army Base. I was an eighteen-year-old high school senior, and he was a twenty-three-year-old Army chopper pilot—warmhearted, tough, fun. A caring husband and father and the love of my life.

  You couldn’t see the real Sean behind the photograph, taken on his third birthday while on vacation in Myrtle Beach. You could see that he was a beautiful blond-haired little boy with a lopsided smile. H
e loved to run to my arms, be held and tickled. He was never the sort of child to get angry or throw a fit because he wanted more chocolate-chip ice cream.

  And the other photographs—the ones of Amy, my sweet little girl, so brimming with energy, a passion for life so powerful that it used to take my breath away.

  It was the manner of their passing that had troubled me most. A business trip eight years ago on a private company jet en route from New Orleans to Savannah that crashed in stormy weather. Jack was never even meant to take the children. It was a last-minute decision because of Amy’s birthday. Busy with work, I couldn’t free myself, but Amy and Sean were so looking forward to seeing Savannah, the ghost capital of the U.S.A., so looking forward to visiting a haunted house that Jack had organized a chauffeur to take them on a private ghost tour. Never did I think that they would become what they most dreaded—specters of the living, souls of the dead. That irony brought me to tears.

  I always imagined that death in a plane crash would come instantly if the aircraft exploded in midair. But I could never cease contemplating the stark terror they would have felt if the aircraft was still intact as it sank through bubbling storm clouds, buffeted by extreme turbulence—their panic a living thing, death looking them in the face as they plunged toward the ground.

  I shuddered every time I visualized that image. Sometimes I cried with despair—my beautiful daughter and son and husband having to endure the crushing, chaotic fear as their aircraft plummeted to earth. It broke my heart, shredded my soul to pieces.

  And after their deaths, the hardness of my own heart truly frightened me. I no longer cared about the suffering of others. Music that had once stirred my heart no longer moved me. I became numb, unaffected. The loss of a child at any stage of life is so unnatural, so wrong, that purpose seems difficult to reclaim. But the loss of two children and my husband was a devastation I never believed I would recover from. I kept expecting to wake up and discover it was all some cruel joke and that everything was OK. But it wasn’t.